Hi there,

I have a few more cottage food bills to announce, and some thoughts below about sales limits.

Most significantly, Texas has unveiled a new food freedom bill. They already had one of the most significant cottage food bills this year, but this one is even bigger.

It does everything their cottage food bill does, plus it allows many types of perishable foods, like non-meat casseroles, soups, meals, etc.

Georgia has re-introduced the same bill that they tried last year. It would be a major improvement to their law if passed. It would allow wholesale, remove the home address label requirement, and make it easier to start a cottage food business.

New Hampshire has yet another bill that I didn’t know about, because why not? They now have a whopping 6 bills in this legislative session (I'm pretty sure that's a record), and word on the street is that all of them are likely to pass.

New Hampshire’s new bill is unique: it would allow someone to offer pickup orders from home once per week without being licensed. It would be a great way for someone to get their feet wet before taking the next step.

Michigan has rolled their previous bill into a new one for this year's legislative session. It’s nearly the same bill as before, but it would bump their sales limit even higher (to $50k).

I did want to talk a bit more about Michigan’s bill. Their bill has a two-tier sales limit: a lower limit ($50k) that applies to most sellers, and a higher one ($75k) for sellers with high-value items ($250+/item). Obviously I’d prefer a state to remove their sales limit altogether, but for a state that’s resistant to change, this is an interesting compromise.

The higher sales limit clearly caters to wedding cake makers. I’ve often thought that sales limits don’t make much sense in general, because different products put different strains on a home kitchen. Since wedding cakes focus more on design and art and have premium pricing, a cake maker could easily hit a $50k sales limit without putting too much pressure on their home kitchen. But selling $50k of jams would likely max out basically any home kitchen environment.

The problem is, most baker artists these days focus on smaller individual items, like decorated cookies, cake pops, etc. Much of their time is spent on design and art too, but they don’t have $250+ items. So if Michigan's bill passes, the tiered sales limit would help select bakers, but not all who need it.

The real solution is to eliminate the sales limit altogether, or bump it up to an amount unattainable from home (like $250k), which more and more states have been doing. To date, there is no evidence that sales limits increase food safety, which is often the stated reasoning for putting them in place. (The real reason, however, is lobbying from existing businesses trying to limit competition.)

So we now have 24 cottage food bills for 2025! It will be interesting to see how they fare as the year progresses.

Forraging ahead,

David